CLEMSON, S.C.—Quarterback Tajh Boyd is somewhere in the sea of orange-and-purple humanity, celebrating his team’s 45-10 victory against Maryland with thousands and thousands of giddy Clemson football fans on the Memorial Stadium field Saturday afternoon.

Making his way slowly from the giant orange Tiger paw painted in the middle of the field toward the players’ exit, Boyd is surrounded by a throng six people deep. Everybody wants a piece of their football hero—though, to be fair, all that’s required to achieve some small aspect of hero status here in Death Valley is to wear the Clemson uniform; Boyd’s achievements just add to the fans’ adoration.

Attractive co-eds run over and hug him. Kids tug on his jersey and grin broadly when he pats their head or says something to them. Slightly inebriated frat boys pound on his shoulder pads. “TAAAAAAAJH!” they shout. His name works well for extended shouts by excited people.

Everybody wants a picture.

There’s an announcement that the field will be cleared at 7 p.m. Everyone checks their watches or phones. That’s 27 minutes away. Nobody is really in a hurry to end the moment, including the players.

Boyd isn’t the last one off the field, but he certainly isn’t the first one. He won’t make that mistake again.

“The first home game of the season, I ran off the field without signing anything,” he says. “Just threw my hat on and jogged off. I felt terrible the whole week. I mean, it’s probably the worst I felt this season, regardless of picks or whatever. It’s something that really hits you.

“You were one of those kids once. I was one of those kids, trying to see Mike Vick or trying to see this or that growing up.”

The fans didn’t rush the field on Saturday because the Tigers beat Maryland. The actual win wasn’t remotely surprising; they entered the game with an 8-1 record and the Terrapins were 4-5.

The Clemson fans rushed the field—well, let’s call it an excited milling about instead of “rushing”—because that’s what Clemson fans do. It’s one of the things that makes this community unique. After football games, everyone celebrates together on the field—whether it’s a huge win against a bitter rival, an expected win against an outmanned opponent or even a loss.

The win Saturday was Clemson’s 12th in a row at home—the most in school history at Memorial Stadium—and it’s not remotely coincidental that Boyd has started exactly 12 home games for the Tigers. It would have been hard to imagine four years ago that he would be a part of such a postgame scene at Clemson.

A heralded recruit out of Virginia, he was leaning toward either Oregon or Ohio State when he made an official visit to Clemson. But here’s the thing: Boyd didn’t even take his visit on a football weekend. Still, football’s place in the Clemson community was impossible to ignore.

“There is no NFL team. There is no NBA team,” he says. “Everything is all about Clemson around here. If you get in a situation where it’s all about football, you’ve got to take advantage of it. I don’t think there’s a more passionate place than Clemson.”

As a star high school quarterback in the quarterback-rich state of Virginia, Boyd was no stranger to football passion.

His success at Phoebus High in Hampton, Va., led him to a friendship with NFL Pro Bowler Michael Vick. Boyd idolized Allen Iverson, the perennial NBA All-Star whom he believes was the best prep quarterback in the state’s history. Boyd wanted to model his game after Ronald Curry, a Hampton High legend who played college ball at North Carolina and spent seven years in the NFL as a wide receiver.

His contemporaries in the state pushed him. Boyd, now a junior at Clemson, is one of six starting quarterbacks in the ACC—Florida State’s E.J. Manuel, Virginia Tech’s Logan Thomas, North Carolina’s Bryn Renner, N.C. State’s Mike Glennon and Virginia’s Michael Rocco are the others—who played prep football in Virginia.

“You’d hear about all those guys, and you’d want to push yourself because you wanted to be ‘that guy’ when they talked about the best quarterback,” Boyd says. “You wanted your name to be right at the top. The best thing for us was just all being in that same area and competing against each other.”

Now, though, Boyd doesn’t see himself as Iverson or Vick or Curry or any of those players he competed against in high school. He looks to another sport entirely when shaping his role as quarterback of a Clemson team that’s averaging 42.9 points per game.

“I look at myself as like a Steve Nash,” he says with a laugh. “I’m the point guard, and I just dish it out. My most enjoyable time as a quarterback is when everybody gets the ball.”

On this beautiful Saturday afternoon in Death Valley, Boyd enjoyed his time at quarterback. In less than three full quarters against an outmanned Maryland squad, Boyd completed 18 of 26 passes for 261 yards and three touchdowns—to three different receivers—before coach Dabo Swinney took him out with the game well in hand. He now has 28 touchdowns this season, including 13 in the past three games.

“You practice perfect, then you’ll play in the game perfect, and that’s what Tajh has been doing lately,” says star wideout Sammy Watkins, who is averaging 130 all-purpose yards per game.

Perfect might be a slight exaggeration. Boyd fumbled twice against Maryland, and he’s thrown nine interceptions this season. And it just so happens that dealing with those turnovers—more specifically, moving forward after those mistakes—is one of the big things he is working on, constantly.

It’s not easy.

“One of the things we’ve talked about on numerous occasions is that he feels he has to be perfect,” offensive coordinator Chad Morris says. “And me, likewise, as a play-caller. Sometimes you feel that. We kind of lean on each other in those times. We laugh together and we’ll share our feelings when it comes to that, because neither one of us can be perfect.”

This offense is where it is because Morris and Boyd have found that common ground. Both are in their second year on the job, and have dealt with the same struggles. And both understand the stakes of Boyd being consistently at the top of his game.

“In this system, if the quarterback’s not playing well, the whole thing isn’t working well,” Morris says. “In the prior system or other systems, when the quarterback isn’t playing well, maybe they can get by and nobody would really know it. But not in this system.”

Last season, Clemson started 8-0 but finished 10-4, including an embarrassing 70-33 loss to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl. This year, there’s a different November feeling around the team, and that starts with Boyd, who is a different quarterback in his second season as the starter. He sees himself as a definite work in progress, though.

“I mean, there’s so much room for improvement,” he says. “My favorite part of it is that you feel like you have more to offer, you have more to give, that you haven’t reached a peak. That’s the best part about playing. I’m just excited about that.”